FROM the City of Culture 2014 anthology, ‘Dream of a City’, is Terri Murray’s paean to a biscuit factory – and its intimate history with locals. Geary’s Biscuit Factory was on Merchant’s Quay, behind the old Court House, as was the Women’s Prison.
Anyone who frequents music at Dolan’s on the Dock Road will be familiar with the sweet timbre of the chimneys of National Rusks, puffing out that malty goodness. It too has closed.
The imagery to Murray’s industry is ambivalent, domestic, suggestive, the artisan baker as homemaker and fragment of a nostalgic, indulgent past.
The Biscuit Factory
The biscuit factory is closing down/ where in your eighteenth year/ you learned the alchemist’s tricks/ of mixing flour and water/ and passed them on to me.
Your cool fingertips and palms/ could mould any shape from grains/ scattered by the dredger/ and drips from the chipped lip of a jug/ on the red formica table
The armatures of sugar under the skin/ of the gingerbread men/ tear brimmed raisins for eyes/ sad mouths of marzipan/ boots and mittens/ welded from chocolate
And how you taught me too/ on the Monday afternoons/ how warmth can seep/ into the coldest of hearts and ovens/ and cause things to rise and fill
It is years since you have tended/ to bread and the cakes are baked/ and packaged in garish boxes/ delivered to the nursing home
The biscuit factory is closing down/ do you remember the factory, Mona? Do you remember me?
Astrolabe Press, 2014
